Luger Who Died Was Terrified of Track

By

Samantha Shields

Updated Feb. 15, 2010 12:20 p.m. ET

BAKURIANI, Georgia—The Georgian luger who died in a horrific training accident hours before the opening of the Vancouver Winter Olympics on Friday told his father he was terrified of the track before doing the run that killed him.

"He called me before the Olympics, three days ago, and he said, 'Dad, I'm scared of one of the turns,' " David Kumaritashvili said in an interview at his house in the small mountain town of Bakuriani on Sunday.

ENLARGE

People observe a moment of silence for Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.
Reuters

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His son, 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili, lost control of his luge on the final turn of the course, the world's fastest, and slammed into a steel support at 90 miles per hour.

"I said, Put your legs down on the ice to slow down, but he said if he started the course he would finish it. … He was brave," Mr. Kumaritashvili's father said, adding that his son had dreamed of being an Olympian from childhood and could have competed in two more Games.

The International Luge Federation has blamed the crash on the luger and not on any "deficiencies in the track," saying that Mr. Kumaritashvili "did not compensate properly to make the correct entrance" into the curve where he slid off the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

Despite those assertions, Olympic officials took unusual measures on Saturday to shorten the course by 190 yards to slow the speeds, and they altered the run to keep lugers on the track should they crash.

Josef Fendt, president of the luge federation, said on Saturday that the track is safe, but that it had turned out to be far faster than designers ever intended it to be. He said that when designers drew up plans for the winding icy slope on the side of Blackcomb Mountain, 76 miles north of Vancouver, they anticipated speeds of about 87.5 miles per hour. During test events at the facility last year and in training runs before these Olympics, the lugers had been traveling at speeds of 96 miles per hour.

ENLARGE

David Kumaritashvili, left, father of late Georgian olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, is consoled by a relative at their home.
AFP/Getty Images

"We did not expect these speeds on this track, but after a while we determined that the track was safe," Mr. Fendt said. He reiterated comments from last year that luge organizers need to consider a speed limit in the design of future tracks.

In Bakuriani Sunday, Mr. Kumaritashvili's father, himself a Soviet-era luger, spoke quietly to a small group of journalists over strong, sweet coffee in the kitchen of his home while Nodar Kumaritashvili's mother, Dodo Kharazishvili, sat crying at a table covered in snapshots of her son and surrounded by female friends and relations in the adjoining room. A dozen or so male friends and relations gathered in the snow and ice outside the house to pay their respects.

Nodar Kumaritashvili started training in 2003 when he was in his early teens. He attended a camp in Germany because Bakuriani's luge track fell into disrepair during the early 1990s, when Georgia fought ethnic wars over its breakaway regions.

He later trained extensively in France and other European countries and was well-qualified to compete in the Olympics, his friend David Kukosuvili said. Mr. Kumaritashvili was ranked No. 44 in the world when he died.

"He was ready for the Olympics; he was a real clean-living sportsman," Mr. Kukosuvili said.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili expressed annoyance at the International Luge Federation Saturday for saying Mr. Kumaritashvili died because of human error and said a new luge track would be built in Bakuriani and named in his honor. "I don't claim to know all the technical details," Mr. Saakashvili said, "but one thing I know for sure: No sports mistake is supposed to lead to a death."

On Bakuriani's ramshackle main street, traders selling ski equipment and local delicacies who knew the dead athlete said they were in shock, and they blamed the accident on the fast luge track.

"He came from a sporting family, and he knew what he was doing," said Giorgi Avakyan, 55, at his ski-rental stall. "Everybody's crying. He was our lad."

Bakuriani is a tiny ski resort 175 kilometers from the capital of Tbilisi and is loved by many Georgians for its quiet atmosphere, especially when contrasted with its glitzier and more expensive rival Gudauri. Small, painted open tourist buses and horses and carts trundle through its streets. Thirty kilometers down the mountain is the town of Borjomi, where Georgia's famous salty mineral water of the same name is bottled.

"What happened is just awful," said Lena Khachaturyan, 26, who works in the pharmacy opposite the high school attended by the young luger. "Everybody in Bakuriani was so proud of Nodar, but in the end he died for his sport."

His body will be flown back to his hometown for burial within the next few days. His father said he had lived there all his life and had never wanted to live anywhere but Georgia.

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